Atlanta from the Ashes, more commonly known as The Phoenix, is a bronze monument located in Atlanta. The sculpture, dedicated in 1969, depicts a woman being lifted from flames by a phoenix, which was consumed by fire and rose from the ashes in Egyptian mythology, just as Atlanta rose from the ashes after the city was burned to the ground during the Civil War by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman.

Atlanta is sometimes called "City of Trees" or "City in a Forest", despite having lost approximately 560,000 acres (230,000 ha) of trees between 1973 and 1999. This loss of tree canopy resulted in a 33% increase in stormwater runoff and a loss of 11 million pounds of pollutants removed annually, a value of approximately $28 million per year. Community organizations and the city government are addressing the problem.

Founded as the terminus of the Western and Atlantic Railroad, Atlanta was originally known as Terminus. It was later renamed Thrasherville after a local merchant and Marthasville after Governor Wilson Lumpkin's daughter before John Edgar Thomson, Chief Engineer of the Georgia Railroad, finally suggested the name Atlanta.

Standing Peachtree, a Creek village where Peachtree Creek flows into the Chattahoochee River, was the closest Native American settlement to what is now Atlanta. During the early 19th century, European settlers systematically encroached on the Creek, forcibly removing them in 1821 under the terms of the Treaty of Indian Springs, in which the Muscogee Creek Confederacy ceded 4,000,000 acres of their territory to the United States government.

The Varsity in downtown Atlanta is the largest drive-in restaurant in the world, covering two city blocks. Originally founded as a hot dog stand by Georgia Tech student Frank Gordy in 1928, the Varsity now serves an average of 15,000 people a day and has a multi-level car park that can hold 600 cars. Comedian Nipsey Russell began his entertainment career at The Varsity in the 1940s as a carhop, dressing in a flamboyant style and peppering his order-taking duties with jokes and songs to earn extra tips.

In 1886, when Atlanta passed prohibition legislation, pharmacist John Pemberton responded by developing Coca-Cola, a nonalcoholic version of Pemberton's French Wine Coca. It was marketed as "Coca-Cola: The temperance drink", as the temperance movement enjoyed wide support during this time. The first sales were at Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 8, 1886, where it initially sold for five cents a glass.

The name Peachtree is extremely common throughout the Atlanta metro area--so common that people joke if you make a right and two lefts from any point in Atlanta, you will find a Peachtree street. In fact, there are 71 streets in Atlanta with some form of "Peachtree" in their name, including Peachtree Creek Road, Peachtree Lane, Peachtree Avenue, Peachtree Circle, Peachtree Drive, Peachtree Parkway, and many more. But peach trees aren't native to the area. The name "peachtree" evolved from "pitch tree", which is what the native pine trees were called because of their sticky sap.

From 1991 to 2005, the Atlanta Braves were one of the most successful teams in baseball, winning an unprecedented 14 consecutive division titles and producing one of the greatest pitching rotations in the history of baseball. Most notably, this rotation consisted of pitchers Greg Maddux, John Smoltz, and Tom Glavine.

In 1941, Jimmy Carter started undergraduate coursework in engineering at Georgia Southwestern College in Americus before transferring to the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Following his presidency, he also taught at Emory University in Atlanta, which awarded him tenure in 2019 for 37 years of service.

On December 15, 1939, Atlanta hosted the premiere of Gone with the Wind, which depicts the struggles of young Scarlett O'Hara, the spoiled daughter of a well-to-do Georgian plantation owner, who uses every means at her disposal to claw her way out of poverty following Sherman's destructive "March to the Sea". The gala event at Loew's Grand Theatre was attended by the film's legendary producer, David O. Selznick, and the film's stars Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, and Olivia de Havilland, but Oscar winner Hattie McDaniel, an African-American actress, was barred from the event due to racial segregation laws.